Keeping the New in New Music

Originally published in the Fall 2023 issue of Notes, Eastman’s alumni magazine.

New Music at the Eastman School of Music was built into the school’s foundations by its first director, Howard Hanson, a celebrated composer. His American Composers Concerts, which began in 1925 to perform the works of living, American composers, gave way to a formal ensemble for new music by 1966 called Musica Nova, initially directed by Richard Pittman. In 1973, the prolific composer and conductor Sydney Hodkinson ’57E, ’58E (MM) became the ensemble’s director, elevating Musica Nova’s prominence by performing and recording the music of many important twentieth century composers.

But in the mid-to-late 1990s—about 25 years ago—a new energy around new music began percolating at Eastman. It was a perfect confluence of events: The school’s new focus on entrepreneurship, a bunch of students with hunger for new music and a problem to solve, and a passionate new music conductor all collided to create lasting change that ushered many Eastman students into significant professional lives.

It all started when Eastman’s longtime director Robert Freeman built the foundations for what was to become the Arts Leadership Program near the end of his tenure, around 1995-96. It was innovative thinking: To become successful in a competitive field with shrinking support, students would have to learn how to do more than just play their instruments well. They would also have to learn to create, support, and sustain careers practically and administratively. Eastman was on the fore front of that training. When James Undercofler became acting dean in 1996 and then dean in 1997, the expansion of entrepreneurship training was a primary goal. It meant that Eastman was keen to support students with the motivation to create new opportunities. At that same moment, such students arrived. A group of new music-loving friends including Alan Pierson ’06E (DMA), Gavin Chuck ’96E (MA), ’04E (PhD), and several others were drawn together over a common cause: bolstering Eastman’s new music scene. When Musica Nova took a hiatus in 1996 to audition new directors, their plight was ever more pressing. Together, they conceived a plan to create a student-run organization that would function as a professional laboratory, one where they would produce new music performances and do everything from planning the repertoire to marketing the concerts. When they presented their proposal to Undercofler, he authorized $3,000 in funding to make it a reality. They called their group OSSIA, meaning “an alternative.”

Then in 1997, the school hired conductor Brad Lubman to direct Musica Nova and teach conducting. Previously, Lubman built a thriving freelance career as a percussionist and conductor in New York City and had recently finished a five-year contract conducting the graduate student orchestra at Stony Brook University, where he received his master’s degree in percussion while assistant conducting the school’s contemporary music ensemble. At the time, Lubman’s international conducting career was starting and he had recently caught the attention of composer Steve Reich. Augusta Read Thomas, who was then on faculty at Eastman, recommended Lubman for the new directorship of Musica Nova, and Freeman invited him to apply. Knowing the excellent reputation of the school, Lubman felt it would be a great opportunity.

He arrived at Eastman to find a contingent of eager students and a supportive administration. “Jim Undercofler had the presence of mind to listen to a bunch of graduate students who came to him,” says Lubman. “Then I show up in 1997 and all these things start to come together around the same time.” Lubman remembers that most students were hesitant to play in Musica Nova his first year at Eastman. “Within a few years, that totally changed,” he said. “History had changed, generations had changed. You now had an influx of people who no longer grew up with the barriers and the boundaries of old music and new music, or pop music and classical music. You had people here who could play in the orchestra and play Tchaikovsky as well as anyone else, but then who could then come into Musica Nova and play Ligeti and Reich as well as anyone else. It was a palpable change.”

Establishing a New Doctorate

At the time Lubman arrived, there was no conducting major focused on new music, something he hoped to change. Lubman at- tended an OSSIA concert where student Alan Pierson, one of OSSIA’s founders, was conducting Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto by memory—a bold choice that reminded Lubman of himself as a young conductor. Lubman knew he’d found his first student. “Not only was Alan conducting from memory,” remembers Lubman. “The thing I was really struck by was the rapport that I could sense at this concert. There seemed to be such a connection between the players. I sensed a sincerity in his musicianship and his conducting that was palpable, and that was affecting the players positively.” But there was one problem: Pierson was a composition major. However, when Pierson came to Eastman, his experience and exposure to new music broadened considerably. 

“A class with Professor of Composition Robert Morris was particularly impactful this way, Pierson says.” He soon felt the music he was writing wasn’t up to par and was already considering changing majors. Conducting was a guilty pleasure, but he never felt he had the stature of a formal conductor, and never considered it as a career choice. After the OSSIA concert, Lubman invited Pierson out for coffee to talk about his conducting—and then offered Pierson the opportunity to pursue a newly conceived doctorate in conducting new music, including assisting Lubman with conducting Musica Nova. “It was a total dream come true, and kind of a life raft for me,” says Pierson. “I knew that I loved conducting and was enjoying what I was doing with it but couldn’t really imagine a career doing it. And Brad is the one who made that imagination possible for me.”

OSSIA To Alarm Will Sound

When Pierson and his friends received the green light to start OSSIA in 1996, they got to work recruiting students to perform with them. With slick posters and a recruitment table in Eastman’s main hall, they met many of the students who would become their eventual professional colleagues: Christa Robinson ’00E, Bill Kalinkos ’03E, Elizabeth Stimpert ’99E (MM), ’01E (MM), Matt Marks ’02E, Jason Price ’04E (MM), ’05E (DMA), Mike Clayville ’00E, John Orfe ’99, ’99E, Caleb Burhans ’03E, Courtney Orlando ’01E (MA), ’03E (DMA), Stefan Freund ’99E (MM), ’02E (DMA), and Miles Brown ’00E, ’12E (DMA). By the early 2000s, OSSIA’s originating students were nearing graduation. “We started to accept that we were going to have to leave,” says Pierson. “We began talking about taking the show on the road and continuing to work together in a professional context.” With the experience gained from OSSIA, they launched Ensemble X, a fixed membership professional touring ensemble. They gave their first concert—a composer’s portrait concert at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, shared with OSSIA—in May of 2001. They soon changed the ensemble’s name to Alarm Will Sound, the inscription on an emergency exit sign. Chuck, the ensemble’s managing director, explains the choice on Alarm Will Sound’s website, writing, “It captured a sense of adventure—risk, even—and had the word ‘sound’ in it.” Alarm Will Sound has since become one of the country’s leading new music ensembles.

The ensemble has performed at places such as Carnegie Hall and the Barbican Center, held residencies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at the Mizzou New Music Summer Festival, and has recorded 11 albums. The ensemble takes on an eclectic mix of music, from the cerebral works of Stockhausen to the hypnotic minimalism of Steve Reich, and even created arrangements of the pulsating electronic beats of DJ Aphex Twin. Many of the current ensemble members still date back to OSSIA’s earliest days. “OSSIA definitely laid the foundation for that,” says Pierson, who serves as Alarm Will Sound’s artistic director and conductor, and who was recently honored with Eastman’s Centennial Award. “That Eastman supported OSSIA was so extraordinary. If Eastman hadn’t made OSSIA possible, I don’t think any of us would have the lives that we have.”

From Students to Professionals

Alarm Will Sound is not an anomaly for Eastman. Several other major ensembles developed out of both OSSIA and Musica Nova over the last 25 years: the JACK Quartet, Mivos Quartet, and Switch~ Ensemble are just a few. Even Ensemble Signal, which was founded by cellist Lauren Radnofsky ’03E, ’07E (MM) and conducted by Lubman, is largely formed through musicians who came up through Eastman’s new music programs. Lubman’s former conducting students now hold major performing and teaching positions, such as Oliver Hagen ’08E, ’10E (MM), ’17E (DMA), Edo Frankel ’12E, ’16E (MM), ’20E (DMA), Mark Powell ’19E (DMA), and Vicky Shin ’18E (MM). In 2017, Lubman also launched a new accredited course on contemporary repertoire, which now attracts even more students to pursue contemporary music training and conducting at Eastman. Lubman attributes the success of Eastman’s new music programs to the types of students Eastman attracts. “One of the things that I’ve loved about being here, aside from the fact that Eastman is one of the great schools, is the students,” he says. “When I think about many of the musicians who ended up being the frequent or star players of Musica Nova, it’s not just their level of playing that comes to mind. It’s also their musical and intellectual level of involvement and engagement.”

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The JACK Quartet

The original members of the acclaimed JACK Quartet—violinists Christopher Otto ’06, ’06E and Ari Streisfeld ’05E, violist John Pickford Richards ’02E, ’04E (MM), and cellist Kevin McFarland ’04E—were all members of OSSIA and Musica Nova in the early 2000s. But it wasn’t until they auditioned for an OSSIA concert in Mexico with composer Helmut Lachenmann that the four of them were grouped in a quartet. “It was the experience at that festival with Lachenmann that propelled us to keep playing together,” remembers Richards. They officially founded JACK in 2005. The JACK Quartet has since been nominated for Grammy awards three times and has been awarded both the Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Fromm Music Prize, among other accolades. They perform concerts all over the world and are known for their stunningly tight and intense performances of complex music by Lachenmann, Xenakis, Haas, and Reich.

Richards remembers how he was eager to get into Musica Nova when he first arrived at Eastman. “When I finally did get into Musica Nova for the first time, I felt like I had found my home at Eastman and my mentor in Brad Lubman.” Otto says Eastman’s ensembles helped prepare the four students to start a professional string quartet. “The self-produced groups like OSSIA were also great in getting a handle on how you put together concerts and produce them and figure out rehearsal strategies,” he says.

The quartet’s most recent project was recording the complete string quartets of John Zorn, which will be released this fall. It was a collaboration with the composer that began at Eastman long ago: The founding quartet members first met Zorn because Musica Nova was performing one of Zorn’s works. Richards returned to Eastman for a one-day residency this past spring that included a workshop on ensemble development, and he coached a Musica Nova rehearsal.

 

Musica Nova: A New Ensemble for New Music

Although Eastman’s focus on new music was integral to the school’s beginnings under director Howard Hanson, there was a push to start an ensemble devoted to the performance of new music around the mid-1960s, under then-director Walter Hendle. That ensemble was Musica Nova. Officially founded in 1966 by Richard Pittman, the ensemble gave its first performance on November 18, 1966. The ensemble presented about four concerts a year, and always included pre-concert lectures and demonstrations. All performers were students and participation in the ensemble was voluntary. But, as Eastman School Historian and Professor Emeritus of Piano Vincent Lenti says, “What Musica Nova was founded to do, there was probably some degree of faculty resistance in the 1960s.”

However, by the time Professor Emeritus Sydney Hodkinson’s took over the ensemble in 1973—50 years ago— there was a clear shift in the culture both at Eastman and more broadly. As Lenti puts it, “Syd gave it more of a profile because the school was ready for it to have more profile.” Under Hodkinson, the ensemble performed, recorded, and even toured the music of contemporary composers. Hodkinson, who became chair of the conducting and ensembles department, was a prolific composer, writing over 250 works of an extraordinary range, and became a part of Eastman’s composition faculty prior to his retirement in 1999. After Musica Nova, founding director Pittman also went on to have a storied career, serving as Music Director of The New England Philharmonic, Music Director of Boston Musica Viva, and Music Director of the Concord Orchestra, among other posts. He won several awards, including ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, and conducts on about 28 recordings for major labels. When Lubman was hired in 1997, Musica Nova was already a thriving ensemble with a solid reputation, ripe for someone to continue to push its mission forward.